Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm you in seven years time, after you've got your dream job, but realised the witty banter, sharp suits and power over young attractive women amazingly doesn't make up for the lack of sleep, long hours and general lack of joie de vivre. [Sub please check spelling]

HOWEVER:

DENNY CRANE

Aaaahhhh, that still works.

Right, lock and load.

(Is Mr Chris Drunk?)

Well that was exciting Had to come in early and the snow ploughs hadn't been out yet, and it was deep enough to scrape the underneath of the car even on the motorway.
Got cut up twice by 4x4 drivers. Cunts!

Isnt that what 4x4 drivers are for ?

An interesting trip in for me today because the gritted areas are pretty much fine , but anywhere thats not is just sheets of ice (works car park / local roads around my house / etc) , and i know its not accurate but the temp gauge on my car went down to minus 8 for some of the journey (it was mainly between -4 and -5)

It's actually + about 0.5 here so it should melt soon. -8 last night though, which is why it's lying so well. Really nice fine snow too - "bitchin' powder" I believe the technical term is.

Looks like I'll be hitting the sales this year - I got £200 worth of vouchers from the office do last night

Having a cold probably did me a favour last night too - hardly drank a thing and was tucked up in bed for midnight, so I'm feeling far more with it than some of the other folk at work today.

I think he's just back from his Law Firm Thingys Christmas cocaine, Del Amitri and whores bash.

Where was my invite?

Whores get booked. Not invited.

Did you enjoy yourself? New knee pads?

Not for me. Would have broke one of my rules: No Vulcans, No Lawyers.

About to leave for the North. MrsA has decided she needs to go to Bicester Village first. I am not amused.

Our terraced roads are sheets of ice because the snow and hail from two nights ago hasn't melted and so has been compacted. Fuck that shit, I'm working from home.

Tsk, day off and I get a booking last night for me to drive to Oxfordshire to take a couple of minutes of footage of some reindeer.

So there goes my plan for a nice long bike ride. Might pop out for a short 15 miler before I have to depart here at lunchtime.

Hey ho.

Astonishing!

My trip home, I want to get from Cardiff to Dewsbury. I normally go to Huddersfield but apparently Kirklees council haven't gritted anything, and it's deathsville on the roads out there. No probs, an extra 9 minutes on the same train from the change in Manchester and I'm there.

Hello, what's this Virgin Trains?

Open Returns:

Cardiff to Huddersfield - £70.30

Cardiff to Dewsbury - £93.70

So an extra nine minutes on the same train costs £23.40, apparently. Barg!

Somehow I think I'll be getting a Huddersfield ticket and trusting to my luck with the conductor.

Wear a shorter skirt than normal and drop your ticket when he comes round.

HTH HAND

Check out

Personally I was thinking of leaning over in a low cut top, breathing heavily and fluttering my eyelids.

Also, I appear to be coming down with a cold - sore throat, sneezes, feeling stupid. And just before Christmas too. Gargh! THANKS PUBLIC FRONT LINE JOB.

The Physics Of Space Battles is a good read.

Nothing new at all though. Everything he talks about there is a pretty understood concept. Except the bit where he complains about computer games getting speed and acceleration mixed up, where I'm pretty sure he's just wrong.

Spare a thought for your ladies of the night, this Christmas.

If you think I'm going to accept any advice from you about acceleration, velocity, momentum, or kinetic energy then you can go jump on a grenade.

Heh. I have A-level maths (including mechanics) at grade A, would you believe.

Although in the exam when I was working out how long a dropped ball would take to hit the ground, it went upwards when released.

Dear Hollywood (remember this?)

Space is three dimensional. Sometimes going to a planet will involve pointing 'down'

So you think that a large (heavy) space craft will have better acceleration and a lower top speed than a small one with the same engine?

Your grasp of kinetics is, as always, excellent

No - he's wrong when he says that computer games get it wrong. I'm pretty sure they all demonstrate lower acceleration the larger the ships are.

Firmly come down with mine, just in time for Christmas. On the plus side, because I took it easy at the party last night, I'm enjoying watching people stumble in late this morning with major hangovers.

Last night's trip out was fun.

I got stuck in the Pets At Home car park last night, my wheels unable to make it up onto ice in front of my parking space, burning rubber, smoke, the lot. Luckily, a man in a lorry took pity and grabbed some big handfuls of dirt out the back and shoved them under my wheels and I managed to skid and slide out. Hooray!

And then in the Toys'R'Us car park, people were completely stuck on ice, so the people walking through were taking it in turns to push one car each to get them going.

A lovely display of Christmas spirit all round.

Leaving the Toys'R'Us car park I didn't get stuck, but I was skidding and sliding around all over the place, going more less where I wanted to go, but having great fun keeping everything just about under some sort of control until I got past the ice.

And then we were stuck just behind an accident coming back in Maidstone, but the police managed to clear a lane in double quick time, so we were only stopped for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Good work, police people!

But I came home with catnip, cat food and Gangs of New York on Blu-Ray for a fiver, so it was worth it. Just about.

I now have a big bag of cat litter in my car, just in case.

If you got smoke and burning rubber, you should have had plenty of traction..?

I was thinking that. Maybe burnt through the ice under the tyres but not enough acceleration to compensate for the weight of cat- nip and litter in the boot when trying to climb onto the ice? Depends how thick the ice was I suppose.

Or maybe it was smoke and burning clutch.

I dunno. There was a big ridge of ice in front of me, not under me, and I couldn't seem to get up onto it.

Still, the boss was stuck at Clackett Lane services for three and a half hours after his car broke down yestersay evening, so I did better than him.

Def Leppard - The Cartoon?

Well, it was burning something. Car seems fine, but I was a bit worried I'd broken something for a while.

You maybe overheated the differential. By the way, it's usually a better idea to "rock" the car forwards and back without spinning the tyres, to get past an obstruction.

Two credit cards paid off today, one more credit card and a personal loan to go and then I'm debt free (apart from my mortgage, but I don't count that).

I really hate it when people bring their kids along to just hang around at work this time of year. Just because you've got sod all to do, doesn't mean that's the case for the rest of us.

Infect them with TB your cold. That'll learn 'em.

No. It will involve pointing at the planet.

I am on holiday... plus at work can't bring kids in which is awesome!!

You miserable cunt.

Well it's hardly fun for the kids either, is it? "This is daddy's desk. Now sit down here and...er...draw stuff on this printer paper for the next 3 hours".

could be worse, it could be play with uncle Cras

Uncle Cras has lockable datacentre cabinets.

Who's a Grinch then

Look at Uncle Craster kids! He can wobble but he'll never fall down! Unless he's trying to get over a very small fence in Nottingham.

I've been doing some work in Basingstoke this month and after my first unpleasant three hour rush-hour-on-a-friday journey home I decided the rest of my trips would be first class as I could just claim it back anyway.

A first class ticket from Basingstoke to Birmingham New Street - approx £60
A first class ticket from Basingstoke to Stoke on Trent (an extra hour in journey time on exactly the same train) - approx £50

This is why I hate trains.

Me, it is I.

My home office, right now.

It's possible I own too much stuff...? Nah.

One of the things I keep meaning to do is to learn more about my car. I've got my Haynes manual and, er, I can change some of the bulbs myself. That's about it. I'm not even sure I could change a tyre myself, though I know the theory.

It's always struck me as being a bit of a dickish kind of move, owning a huge, powerful complicated machine and only knowing enough about it to work it at the most basic level. Rather like owning a computer and not knowing what a graphics card is or how to uninstall programs you don't need any more.

I'm not saying I should know how to take the engine and apart and put it back together or anything, but to be able to know what might be wrong and to do basic tasks would seem to be sensible, if not a requirement of ownership.

If I ever get another car, I want to learn more about them first. The car I had was rather troublesome and every time something went wrong with it, I'd have to rope my Dad in to help as I didn't have a clue. The PC is a good comparison - I can diagnose and fix most PC problems and yet I was driving a car around without knowing the basics of it.